


I Found Something In The Woods Somewhere

by LayALioness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, It's A Wonderful Life fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5552114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Fine,” Bellamy huffs. “Hey, Jaha, long time no see. Thought you were dead. Care to explain?”</p><p>“I was sent here,” Wells says, like it’s obvious. “To change your mind.”</p><p>Bellamy frowns. “Change my mind?”</p><p>“You think everyone would be better off, if you’d never been born. I’m here to convince you that they wouldn’t.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Found Something In The Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> idk. 
> 
> title from hozier.

Bellamy makes it all the way to the edge of the ravine without vomiting, which he considers a feat. He hasn’t been able to wash his face yet, or even wipe it with a muddy cloth, so each breath he takes tastes like copper. He keeps blinking his own blood into his eyes—and a little bit of his sister’s, probably, from when her knuckles scraped against his bones. Her words are still flinging themselves around in his head, like an echo, or a war drum.

_You’re dead to me!_

His stomach rolls and this time he doesn’t stop himself from doubling over, spilling his guts over the ledge.

It takes him a moment, once he’s done retching, to look around and take in his surroundings. Trees, dirt, moss, the usual. The cliff’s edge just in front of him, and the ravine just below. It’s a long fall, a hard one, with rocks at the bottom to break his bones, and a stream just deep enough to drown him.

It takes him no time at all to realize he’s been here before, seen someone take that dive, lost her body to the water. _Charlotte_.

It was so easy for her, he remembers. One step, and she was gone. It would be so easy—and what waits for him back at camp, now? Two dozen faces, ranging from pitying to disappointed to outright enraged.

And they should be, is the worst part. God knows, he is. Two people on this godforsaken planet that he loved and he’s lost them both. Octavia won’t forgive him, won’t speak to him, probably won’t even _look_ at him ever again. She’s already gone by now, most likely, gone just like Clarke.

He’s tired of waiting, tired of waking up every morning thinking _today might be the day_ , only to go to bed every night feeling empty. He’s tired of feeling anything at all. He can’t remember the last time he smiled. It hurts the muscles of his mouth, just to try.

_And it would be so easy…_

No one would even care. He’s caused so much pain, so much death, so much heartache—his mom, and O, and the people on the Ark, Murphy, Charlotte, Dax. The Grounders. _Lincoln_. So many people who lost everything, because of him.

It would have been better, if he were just never born.

“Is that really what you think?”

Bellamy whirls around at the sound of the voice, to find a boy standing just a few feet away, propped up against a tree, but not like he’s relaxing. Like he needs the help to stay upright. Bellamy feels his jaw drop open, knows he’s gaping stupidly, but he can’t really help it.

Wells Jaha is speaking to him. He’s frowning at him to, just like when he was alive. He’s wearing his Ark-issued clothes and jacket, even though it’s not cold. There’s a pale line on his neck, just a few inches wide, like a scar. Bellamy tries hard to swallow, but it just doesn’t take.

“You’re not as smart as I gave you credit for,” Wells says, sighing, and Bellamy should probably feel insulted, but he’s still a little stuck on the fact that a dead guy is the one insulting him.

Maybe he’s going crazy—it honestly wouldn’t surprise him. Or maybe O actually knocked him unconscious, and this is all some weird coma-dream. Or maybe he already took the leap, and this is the fucked up afterlife he’s been trapped in. Each of these thoughts seems more likely than the obvious; that Wells Jaha is somehow back from the dead, and is judging his most recent life choices.

Bellamy wets his lips a little, trying to remember how to speak. What should he even say, to a dead boy? He didn’t even really _know_ Wells, not back when he was still alive. He’s sort of the reason he’s dead, now.

“You said I was smart?” he asks, and Wells gives him a Look.

“ _That’s_ what you come away with? Not, I don’t know, the fact that I’m supposed to be dead?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I figured it might be, I don’t know. Rude, to ask about it.”

Wells just stares, like _he’s_ the ridiculous one.

“Fine,” Bellamy huffs. “Hey, Jaha, long time no see. Thought you were dead. Care to explain?”

“I was sent here,” Wells says, like it’s obvious. “To change your mind.”

Bellamy frowns. “Change my mind?”

“You think everyone would be better off, if you’d never been born. I’m here to convince you that they wouldn’t.”

“Why?” Bellamy doesn’t really know what he believes, when it comes to _the powers that be_ , the ones that he’s read about, that he learned about in school. The Big Ones, with books and followers in the millions, back before the bombs. He’d prayed to the Roman gods, when he was a kid. The ones who had planets named after them—he figured, they were the most important, which meant they were probably the ones who could help.

He stopped around the time he was eleven, when he realized the kind of help he needed wasn’t divine. When he realized the help wasn’t coming.

So he’s having a little bit of trouble picturing some invisible force, sending him a guardian angel in the form of a dead boy he inadvertently helped kill. If nothing else, it’s just too ironic.

But Wells just shrugs, looking a little bored with the whole thing. “Beats me. All I know is—one minute, I was watching you through the clouds, and the next, I was here. And I just… _knew_ , what I’m supposed to do. That I’m supposed to stop you.”

Bellamy frowns. It all sounds too simple, too good to be true, and he’s pretty much learned that that always spells trouble. “Stop me from what?”

“From jumping,” Wells walks over, looking down into the ravine, stretching a finger out, to show him.

Bellamy follows the line, eyes falling on the crumpled form of a body, bloody and broken, split open on the rocks below. The water around its edges has gone a rusty brown color, with blood.

He recognizes everything about it, no matter how twisted the limbs are—he knows that hair, that jacket, that crooked neck. It’s been months since he’s looked in a mirror, but Bellamy knows his own face well enough.

His corpse is lying at the bottom of the cliff, stiff and unmoving. Bellamy can’t tear his eyes away.

“It gets easier,” Wells says, voice soft, and Bellamy turns to find him watching. His eyes are filled with sympathy, but instead understanding, which make sense. Wells is the deadest guy he knows.

“Being dead?”

“Not being alive,” Wells corrects. “If that’s what you want.”

“Of course it’s not,” Bellamy snapped, a reflex. After all, who really _wanted_ to be dead?

 _You did_ , he thinks, reminds himself. _Just five minutes ago. You wished you’d never been born._

Wells seems to read his mind—and maybe he can. It’s not like Bellamy knows what the rules are, for guardian angels, or ghosts, or whatever the fuck he is. “You sure about that?” he asks, still with that understanding in his eyes. Like no matter what Bellamy’s answer is, he’ll take it, and he’ll believe.

“No,” he admits, barely a whisper. “I’m not. I—maybe it would be better, if I wasn’t.”

Bellamy can see now, how jumping would be selfish. He may already be dead to Octavia, but the others would care. He was one of the main hunters, getting pretty good at the snares, and he always took the dawn patrol because he knew no one else liked it. Miller would care, Monty too, and Raven, maybe Kane. People he didn’t know too well, but still worked with, still cared about, in that vague open-armed way.

Clarke would care, if she ever came home to find him missing. He doesn’t doubt that anymore—he knows he’s important to her, knows that if she were here right now, he wouldn’t even be considering this. She’d kick his ass, if she knew.

But she isn’t here, and she doesn’t know, and he’s not sure when she’s coming back, or _if_.

And the others might be sad to find his body at the bottom of the ravine, but if he had never existed in the first place? He tries to think of someone whose life would be worse, and he can’t.

Charlotte would still be alive. Sterling. And Dax, who’d only wanted to see his mom again. Maya, and her dad. Three hundred people on the Ark that he never even knew the names of. More than that, on the ground. The children in Mt. Weather.

And Wells.

“Let’s find out,” Wells says, right on cue, and Bellamy frowns over at him in question. “You think the world would be better if you’d never been born—let’s find out.”

“You can do that?”

Wells shrugs, flexing his hands a little, like he’s testing them. “I don’t know. This is a first for me too, you know.”

Bellamy almost makes a joke about that—a pretty bad one because he’s the worst at jokes—but then the world starts to realign itself around them. The trees start to narrow and stretch, the ground shifts under their feet, like the whole earth is growling, vibrating with the hum of it. Below, the sound of the rushing water grows louder and louder until it’s the only thing he can hear, pulsing through his mind. Even Wells starts to change, face growing inwards, eyes hollow and skin pale, mouth gaping wide open and ominous.

Bellamy blinks and it’s over. The trees are just trees. The stream babbles quietly below him. There’s a soft breeze that rustles some of the dead leaves around their feet. Wells is watching him, patiently waiting.

“That’s it?” Bellamy asks. It feels like there should be _more_ , somehow. He doesn’t feel any different; doesn’t feel cold or pale or see-through, like he’d imagined a phantom would.

“Welcome to a world without Bellamy Blake,” Wells says, and he starts picking his way through the forest, back towards the camp.

Bellamy glances down over the edge, but the stream there is empty, with no battered freckled corpse to be found. He turns to follow Wells out.

He’s expecting to be led back to Camp Jaha, but instead Wells cuts suddenly west. It takes Bellamy a moment to realize they’re heading towards the Grounder village that Finn massacred. He hasn’t seen it since, isn’t sure what to expect, really.

Bellamy actually realize he’s been waiting for this whole thing to be proven fake, until the first Grounder he sees walks right through him.

He’s left spluttering, standing rigid in place, like he’s worried that if he takes another step he might sink through the ground, completely. When he glances up, Wells is looking at him, sympathetic.

“I told you,” he says, and he’s right. “Don’t worry; you get used to that.”

He wants to ask Wells how long he’s been on the ground with them, how many times he’s been walked through and talked over and ignored, because they couldn’t see him. How many times did he try to warn them about Finn or the Grounders or the Mountain Men? How many people did he watch die, because they couldn’t hear his voice?

But then Bellamy catches sight of someone familiar, and he rushes forward, stopping just short, a few feet away. It’s Monroe, and he doesn’t even know her that well, hasn’t actually spoken to her since they lost Sterling, and rescued Mel, but. She’s _alive_ , and that’s worth something.

Her head’s shaved, and she’s speaking quietly to a Grounder girl, at the fire, eating some sort of curry with her bare hand, scooping bites out with two fingers. They’re speaking Trigedasleng, and Bellamy can’t understand the words, but he recognizes the shine in her eyes, the pink in her cheeks.

“You’re flirting with her,” he says, amused, even though Monroe can’t hear him. “Holy shit.”

“Most of the Ark survivors moved into the villages,” Wells says, coming up to stand beside him. He’s watching Monroe fondly, even though as far as Bellamy knows, they’d never even spoken. He guesses it probably doesn’t matter—Wells has been watching over them for some time, now. He probably knows all of them fairly well.

“What about the 48?” he asks, glancing around. He sees a smattering of faces he can recognize just barely, if he thinks back hard enough. People he might have passed down the corridors, or seen in the cafeteria or at a Unity Day dance. But none of them are _his_ people.

“Most of them didn’t make it,” Wells says, and Bellamy’s head whips around so sharply his neck cracks, and it burns but he doesn’t even notice. “Without you as the inside man, Finn tried. He wasn’t as successful.”

Bellamy swallows hard, nearly choking. He hasn’t thought about Finn in months, hasn’t let himself, because the truth is he’s at fault for that too, isn’t he? He gave Finn the gun, sent him off through the woods with Murphy. He didn’t watch over him like he should have, because even if Spacewalker was a royal pain in his ass, he was still one of Bellamy’s. He was only even out there for him, had left the safety of the Dropship in the middle of a war, to try and save Bellamy.

And now he was dead _again_.

“What about Miller?” he tries to think of everyone else who was trapped in the mountain but—god, it was _all_ of them, practically. “Monty, Jasper, Harper? _Clarke_?”

“Clarke escaped, just like last time,” Wells says. “Jasper died on the first day. We didn’t arrive in time, and the panther got him.”

Bellamy looks at him. “ _We_? You--? Are you alive?”

Wells smiles, but not like he finds the question funny. “No. I died on the second day. Murphy stabbed me to death.”

“Holy shit,” Bellamy breathes. He’d known Murphy was volatile back at the beginning, had even tried to kill him, but—he’d gone after Bellamy for revenge. Killing someone in cold blood, he just didn’t think Murphy was the type.

As if reading his thoughts, Wells’s mouth flattens a little, like it’s a joke. “Believe it or not, he’s actually worse, when you’re not around.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Somewhere,” Wells shrugs. “He was banished by the Grounders. They have a— _game_ ,” he grimaces. “Where they set hounds after criminals, through the woods. Like they’re hunting a fox, or a rabbit.”

Bellamy frowns, looks away. It’s hard for him to feel sorry for Murphy in any lifetime, but no one deserves _that_. To be hunted down like an animal, and torn apart by dogs.

“What about my sister?” He starts scanning every face he sees, searching. It’s hard, because the sun is nearly set and the dim light of a dozen campfires seeps everything in shadows, but he knows every inch of Octavia by heart. He’ll recognize her. “Wells, where’s O?”

“She’s alive,” Wells says immediately, placating. “But she’s not here. She’s at the sea.”

Bellamy nods, understanding. “With Lincoln. They got away.”

“No,” Wells shakes his head. “Bellamy, without you, Octavia was an only child. She never went to the Sky Box. She came down with the Ark.”

Bellamy feels his eyes go wide—he should have realized, he knows. Should have thought about what it would mean for her, to not have him as a brother, but. It’s so ingrained in him, being a sibling, that he can’t even imagine _not_ being one. He can’t imagine a world with only one Blake.

Except, maybe there’s more than one, now.

“And my mom?” He wets his lips, mouth gone suddenly dry with _want_. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed her, until now, now that she might be alive.

“She died in the landing,” Wells says, putting a hand on his shoulder. It’s easy for Bellamy to forget sometimes, how tall he is. “We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want.”

“I thought that was the whole point,” Bellamy clears his throat. “Proving how much better the world is with me in it.”

“I don’t know about _better_ ,” Wells says, voice teasing but gentle. Like all he needs is Bellamy to tell him to stop, and he would. “But it’s certainly not _worse_.”

“I got you killed,” Bellamy reminds him. He’s not really sure why he wants Wells to hate him, but he does. This kindness, the soft way he’s treating him—he doesn’t deserve it. He hasn’t _earned_ it, and the fact of that makes his skin itch.

“You gave some advice to a troubled little girl,” Wells says, firm, leaving no room for argument. “The advice was, admittedly, pretty shitty. But sooner or later you’re going to have to stop thinking everything revolves around you. You’re going to have to realize not everything’s your fault.”

“She only killed you because I—”

“I know what happened,” Wells barks, the sharpest Bellamy’s ever seen him. “I was there.”

He has a point, so Bellamy lets it go. Wells probably knows more about his own murder than he does, anyway.

“Lincoln!”

Bellamy and Wells both turn at the voice, and watch Raven Reyes duck out of a cabin, off to the side. She marches across the packed mud, towards a group of Grounders and adopted Arkers, huddled around one of the fires. She’s not wearing a brace, but she somehow looks worse than Bellamy’s ever seen her.

Worse and _angry_. Like her blood’s bubbling just below the surface of her skin, waiting to overflow and burn everything she touches.

As she walks, some of the boys around them start snickering. She pointedly ignores it, even though she _has_ to hear, and Bellamy shoots them each a glare in turn, even though they can’t see him.

“Watch out now,” one of them mutters. “Here comes the harlot.” A few of his friends laugh under their breath, and Bellamy hates them.

“What the fuck,” he says, because he can’t actually hit them, not with his current incorporeal state.

Wells sighs beside him, and when Bellamy turns, he sees he’s watching Raven with something very close to longing.

Which doesn’t really make sense, as he’s pretty sure Wells and Raven never even _met_ —unless she came to the ground earlier in this life. They might have known each other on the Ark, too. They might have known each other half a dozen ways that they didn’t, before. Everything in this world is different.

He wants to ask about it, but. That’s not really the kind of relationship he and Wells had, or have, and it’s not any of his business.

“Did you want to see your sister?” Wells offers, and Bellamy nods, expecting to have to march through the woods again, heading east.

But instead, he blinks, and opens his eyes to salty air, so wet he can feel beads of moisture collect on his skin. Everything smells and tastes like the ocean, just like he’d always imagined it would.

It’s dawn now, the light a pale lavender spreading over the sky. The waves are pale too, a gray-blue-green, like someone spilled all three colors and muddled them up until you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the others began. The water brushes against the sand gently, nothing like the manic, huge waves he’s seen in the pictures of books, or old Ark vids. This ocean seems soft, and slow. Calm. He likes it.

The village is different, too—the cabins are on stilts, and look less like cabins and more like the pre-Atomic houses he learned about in school. Two stories, with paned windows and doors with glass set in the wood. Everything is dyed variants of pale gray and pink and yellow, he paint streaky from shallow strokes.

“Where is she?” Bellamy asks, but doesn’t wait for the answer. Suddenly, there she is, a blur in the distance, but he knows it’s her all the same. Her hair is cropped short by her shoulders, wild and loose, and she’s walking along the sand, stopping to bend down every few seconds, before straightening and taking two more steps. “What’s she doing?”

“Let’s find out,” Wells says, pleasant, and starts over. He’s breathing deeply through his nose, like he’s trying to suck in all the ocean air and keep it, hoarding it in his lungs.

Bellamy doesn’t stop until he’s close enough to reach out and touch her, to run his fingers through her wind-tangled hair. He doesn’t, can’t, but. It’s enough, just being close to her again.

She’s picking up bits of colored glass, digging them out of the wet sand with her dirty fingernails. She has a basket made out of some sort of flat-bladed grass, that she puts the shards in. They catch the light differently each time she moves.

“ _Oktevia_ ,” someone says, and Bellamy looks over to find a Grounder boy around O’s age, that he doesn’t recognize.

Octavia, for her part, just snarls a little, and goes back to collecting her glass. “Fuck off,” she snaps, clearly upset with the boy, and so Bellamy decides to hate him on principle.

“What did he do?” he asks, growls really, but Wells only shrugs.

“Probably nothing. This Octavia—she’s not really the same.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Bellamy studies his sister; she certainly _looks_ different. More wild and untamed and furious. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she _is_ different. She’d been pretty untamed in his lifetime, too.

“Aurora wasn’t the best mother,” Wells says, slow and gentle, like he’s trying to help Bellamy through the words. It’s nice, but ultimately unnecessary; Bellamy’s always known his mom wasn’t great. “And Octavia didn’t have you around, to take care of her, so. She learned to take care of herself. And she learned not to trust people.”

Bellamy turns back in time to see her fling sand into the boy’s eyes, kicking his knee out from under him before she takes off towards one of the stilted houses. She climbs a wooden ladder that’s leaned up against the side, and crawls inside.

He doesn’t really _mean_ to move, but one moment he’s outside on the sand, and the next, he’s in a wooden room, watching as Octavia gingerly takes the bits of glass from her basket, lining them carefully against the window sill. The room is filled with not so much furniture, but _things_ —more sea glass, bowls of sand dyed red or yellow from the seeds of plants, dried flowers and milkweed, bits of driftwood, even a threadbare carpet he’s sure must have come from the Ark.

There’s a pile of old moth-eaten blankets and strange spotted leather, like seals, in one corner. He pictures her burrowing into it, at night when the winter wind bores into her bones.

He’s still looking around and examining the room, when Wells shows up.

“You got the hang of that quickly,” he says, frowning a little, which Bellamy takes to mean Wells didn’t.

“Not really,” Bellamy shrugs, watching as Octavia pulls some sort of fish from her basket. It stinks, like the ocean but darker, like death. He’s expecting her to take out a cook stove or something, but instead she just bites into it, raw. “Does she live alone?”

“The other villagers call this the Orphan-House,” Wells says. “Other kids live here, whose parents died on the Ark, or in the crash. There was a sickness that got them early-on, and a few died from that as well.”

“But she has others,” Bellamy clarifies, watching as she eats, letting the slime of fish guts slide down her chin and drip onto the floor, uncaring. “She’s not alone.”

“In a way,” Wells shrugs. “They’re not _friends_ , if that’s what you think. I told you, she doesn’t trust people.”

Almost as if to prove him right, someone—around O’s age, maybe a little younger—pokes their head in the room, and Octavia hisses at them like an animal. They disappear back out into the hall, and O scarfs down the rest of her meal, like she’s worried someone might try to take it from her. She eats it so quickly he’s worried she might throw up.

Bellamy watches her for hours. Wells tries to get him to leave, to check on some of the others, but Bellamy just waves him off and he disappears. Octavia never leaves her room, spends a good bit of time sharpening driftwood into spears, and arrows. She has a collection of rocks that she ties to the tips. When she does go outside, it’s to hunt, or fish. She smears dark charcoal around her eyes, for protection, and strips down to nothing, jumping naked in the water, catching a fish with her hands.

He doesn’t hear her speak again. He’s not sure she knows how.

As the sun sets, he watches her sink into the furs and the leather, just like he knew she would, bundling up even though it’s not cold. She slept like that as a kid too, always had to be completely covered, like the blankets might act as some sort of shield. He used to give her his, to sleep with.

Wells finds him sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes burning from staying open so long, but he’s not even a little tired. He’s not sure he can sleep, in whatever form he is—dead, half-dead, phantom. His legs feel like pins and needles when he stands up, and he shakes them out a little.

“There’s someone else you have to see,” Wells says, laying a hand on his shoulder, and Bellamy doesn’t need to ask who it is. There’s only one person left.

“Where is she?” Bellamy asks, and watches as Wells’s lips thin, like he doesn’t like the taste of what he’s about to say.

“Polis,” he says. “She’s—she’s not the Clarke you left.”

“You mean the one who left me,” Bellamy says, too resigned to really feel bitter about it. When she’d left, he’d spent those first days a whirlwind of hurt and anger and resentment, and he’d gotten a lot of shit done around camp, with spite propelling him forward. But eventually it settled into a mild burn, and then finally patience. He just wanted her back.

And he wants her back now, regardless of what Clarke she is.

“Show me,” he says. Wells nods. He blinks. The room fades into something else, something darker.

It’s a bunker. He recognizes the smell of stale air and concrete and dirt. There are board games piled up in one corner, covered in dust so thick it’s solid. Everything echoes around him, including the sound of feet shuffling, as someone readjusts.

Wells isn’t with him; it’s just Bellamy in the bunker, and whoever is making that noise. He follows the sound, moving slowly through the darkness. There’s the flickering glow of a candle around the corner, but otherwise everything is shadows and gray steel.

He finds her sitting on her knees, unwinding the nest of braids, like snakes around her skull. Her face shimmers with Grounder paint, but not any he’s ever seen before. These colors aren’t black and white, or red from war, but instead blue and pink and yellow. Pale, like the ocean. They make her skin shine like the inside of a shell.

She’s wearing strange clothes too, spotted leather, the kind Octavia’s asleep under, and snake skin around her waist. Her boots are worn but sturdy looking, black with thick metal plates in the toes.

It takes him a moment to realize the sound isn’t of her readjusting, but _crying_. She shakes out her hair, letting it fall in wild and weirdly bent tangles around her shoulders. The ends are dipped in red, like blood. He hates it.

“They call her _heda,_ ” Wells says, and Bellamy jumps, turning around to see him leaned against a half-fallen shelf, off to the side. “She inherited the title when Lexa died.”

“Lexa died?” Bellamy turns back to Clarke. She’s still crying, the tears making wet streaks through her paint, but her face is otherwise smooth and composed. She’s not sobbing, or sniffling, or gasping with it. It’s like her eyes were just too full of water, so some is leaking out.

“Clarke killed her,” Wells says, voice sounding strange. Like he can’t actually believe what he’s saying. “After Mt. Weather. They didn’t have the inside man, and the fog was still a threat, so Lexa had Raven bomb the mountain and cause an avalanche. Everyone inside is dead.”

“Including the 48,” Bellamy finishes, and Wells nods. “Clarke killed her?”

“Knife to the throat,” Wells grimaces. “Apparently it’s very popular. The Grounders don’t know—they think she died in battle. Clarke inherited the throne.”

“So what’s she doing in a bunker?”

“She comes here when she’s upset.” Wells shrugs, crossing over to sit down on the dilapidated sofa. It used to be a floral print, but the pattern is nearly invisible, from age and dust and insects nesting in the cushions. “I think it calms her.”

They watch as Clarke begins to clean the paint off her face, with an old stained cloth of ripped cotton. She smears the colors around until they’re just smudges of gray and brown and vomit-green, high up on her cheekbones and in the dip of her chin. Bellamy fights the urge to yank the rag from her hands and just do it himself, wipe up the spots she keeps missing.

But he can’t. He can’t even ask her what she’s thinking, why she isn’t at home with their people—she can’t hear him, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know who he was.

“I thought she’d be with everyone,” he admits, crouching down until he’s at her eye level. Her gaze is empty, eyes glazed and red-rimmed. She’s staring down at the floor, but he’s not sure she can actually see it. “I thought they’d all be alive, and happy, and together.”

“It’s easy to think you’re not important,” Wells agrees, and Bellamy glances over at him.

“You’re important,” he says, and Wells stares, surprised. “You were. Are. Whatever—we could have used you.”

Wells shrugs, a little hopeless. Bellamy wonders if he’s actually come to terms with his own death, or if he just doesn’t see the point in wondering. He wonders if he knows, how their lives would have turned out, if Wells’s hadn’t been cut short.

Bellamy turns and reaches forward—he knows what’ll happen, that his hand will just sink right through, but. He moves to touch her cheek anyway, to brush her hair behind her ear.

He goes through her, like he knew he would. She shivers a little, hair drifting lightly in the draft.

Wells is across the hall, studying the stack of board games. He pulls one from the pile—a dull purple cover says THE GAME OF LIFE! and he flashes it to Bellamy with a wry smile, like an inside joke.

Bellamy closes his eyes, listens to the sound of Clarke breathing. He thinks about the smell of the ocean, the firelight on Raven’s skin, his sister handling the glass shards carefully, so she wouldn’t slice her skin.

“Take me back,” he says, whispers, but he knows Wells will hear. “I want to go back. I want to live, please, just—take me back.”

He feels Wells step up beside him, his cool hand on his back, over the dips of his spine. “You’re sure?”

Bellamy nods, and he feels the world fall away around him.

When he opens his eyes, the sun is so bright that he has to squint. His eyes start to water, and he groans, sitting up. His back is aching, his shoulder blades bruised, ribs still in pain from yesterday. A quick glance around tells him he’s back in the forest, at the top of the ravine, but that’s not where his eyes land.

Wells grumbles a little, shifting from where he’s asleep on the ground, just a few feet away. He blinks and sits up, rubbing the back of his neck, like there’s a crick there.

“You’re alive,” Bellamy says, and Wells glances down at himself, like he’s checking, just to make sure. But he is—he’s solid, and tangible when Bellamy reaches over to pinch his arm—he’s _alive_. “ _How_?”

“It was part of the trade,” Wells says, a little breathless, like he’s worried it’ll all turn out to be a dream, or hallucination, or maybe they’re both dead and this is the _real_ afterlife.

Bellamy doesn’t believe it, though. He knows what life feels like, and this is it; aches in his muscles and dirt under his fingernails and sweat on his skin. Everything smells damp, with morning dew, even though the sun is high enough it must be noon already. He wonders how long he’s been gone.

He pushes himself up off the ground, and gives Wells a hand to pull him up. He notices the thin line of a scar, when the collar of his shirt falls down. But, it’s a _scar_ , and they’re _alive_. And they have somewhere to be.

He needs to find Clarke. And he needs to find Octavia, make her listen while he apologizes—he thought he could let her walk away, let her hate him. He thought that was what’s best, but. He was wrong. You can’t have one Blake without the other, that’s how it’s always been.

And he needs to find Clarke. He needs to have her with him again, just—just _with him_. He doesn’t even care how. He’ll drag her back himself, and untangle her hair and clean the paint from her face, and he’ll hold her until she’s whole again. Until they both are.

Camp Jaha is exactly as he left it—same fence, same half-finished cabins, same cool metal Ark glinting in the sun.

But the gates are already open, and there’s shouting coming from inside. Bellamy shares a look with Wells, before they both take off running.

It doesn’t take him long to see what the chaos is about—everyone’s crowded around in the center of the camp, some laughing, some crying, some staring in shock. A few are milling around the peripherals, clearly wanting to be a part of it all, but still a little distanced. Most of the crowd is made up of the 48, he notices—Monroe and Harper and Monty and Miller, and even Jasper, off to the side, like he’s not sure if he should join.

It’s not really a surprise when the group pulls apart, and he can see her. There’s really only one person, who could bring them all together like that.

Clarke’s eyes land on him and she freezes, the grin splitting her face wide. Her hair’s a mess, and still red at the ends, though the color’s faded. She’s covered in cuts and scrapes and bruises, but she’s flushed a little pink, and smiling, and _bright_. He’s crossing over before he fully realizes, and then she’s in his arms, wrapped around him like last time, like the time before, but still different.

He ducks his head, presses his face into her neck, and _breathes._

“I was coming to find you,” he says, voice a little hoarse from disuse, and she laughs.

“I beat you to it.”

She pulls back to look at him, and he watches as her eyes slide over and behind him, widening as she gasps. He lets her go so she can crash into Wells, shouting his name like a mantra. He laughs, loud and bright, and then _everyone’s_ passing him around, reaching to touch him, to make sure he’s real, whispering his name like some ancient prayer. Asking _how_ and _how long_ and _why?_

Wells just shrugs, because he doesn’t know the answers. Their next move is to ask Bellamy, but he knows even less.

“It’s a miracle,” Abby decides, and Bellamy can’t really disagree with her.

Clarke finds him at the fire that night, plate of food in hand, an extra of everything, which she hands off to him. He takes one of the hard crusted bread rolls one of the nearby clans gave them. They have a mill, and some wheat fields, and Bellamy, Miller and Wick have been visiting them every few weeks, so they can learn to build one of their own.

“I heard about Octavia,” she says, sitting down beside him, so close they touch. “I thought you’d go after her, first thing.”

“I was going to,” he admits. “And then I was going to find you, but.”

Clarke grins, teasing, clearly thankful he’s not upset. He can’t find it in himself to be; he’s too busy just being fucking _relieved_. “Sorry for ruining your plan.”

“Yeah, what an asshole,” he smirks, and she hits him, but then ruins it by passing some of the soupy sauce Monty made with the wild tomatoes and some nice-smelling herbs. He dips his bread in, and moans at the taste—he can’t help thinking _I would never have been able to taste this, if I were dead_. He’s been thinking it all day— _I would never have been able to smell those wild flowers, if I were dead. I would never have heard Harper’s laugh, if I were dead. I would never have known what Clarke felt like, if I were dead_.

“I’m heading out at first light,” he admits. Part of him wonders if he should just leave without telling her, without leaving a note, so she can know what it is to be consumed with worry. But he knows he never could. “To go find her.”

“I figured,” Clarke nods, and then worries her lip a little, until it’s pink and puffy. He wants to soothe it with his tongue.

He snaps his gaze back to the fire, and finishes his meal. He can still feel Clarke watching him, and he’s about to say something stupid, like _take a picture, it’ll last longer_ , because he is the _worst_ at jokes.

But when he turns, she kisses him. It’s quick, and dry, and then she’s pulling back, grinning a little shakily, like she’s nervous. Like she has any right to be, when he’s been so fucking _obvious_ , and she’s never made any sort of move.

“What was that for?” It’s a testament to his will power, that his voice stays as steady as it does.

Clarke hums a little, like she’s thinking. “Being you,” she decides, and then falters, grin going sloppy and sentimental. “I missed you, and I—I told myself that when I saw you again, I’d do that. I’d let you know.”

Bellamy clears his throat. “ _When_ you saw me again?”

“Not seeing you again was never an option,” she says, and he nods a little jaggedly, before swiping the plate off her lap and onto the ground. She frowns. “Hey—” but she doesn’t get to finish her argument, because he’s tugged her into his lap, chasing her words with his mouth.

When she pulls back, she dips her face to his neck, and he rubs a hand up the back of her shirt, pressing her closer. “I missed you too,” he says, low, just for her. He feels the flash of her teeth when she smiles.

He expects to wake up with Clarke tangled around him, all naked pale skin and hair in his mouth, but instead he wakes up alone. He’s only a little disappointed—he’s not sure he would have been able to leave, if she’d been on top of him, all warm and sleepy affection.

Bellamy grabs his pack, the one Raven and Monty had insisted on filling, with tools he’ll probably never use and herbs he most likely won’t need, but he wasn’t complaining. He _hates_ packing, himself.

He finds Clarke waiting at the gate, bag on her shoulders, dressed for the weather with a hat pulled over her hair. She beams up at him.

“Ready?” she asks, grabbing his hand, because of course she wants to take the lead.

“More than you know,” he says, throwing a wave at Wells, who’s watching by Raven’s gate, arguing with her about some sort of metal.

Raven tips her head back to laugh at something he’s said. Wells meets Bellamy’s eyes, waves back.

They walk through the gate.


End file.
